This blog won't reduce scoptophilia to its moral majority definition of "watching others engaging in sexual activity" neither to its Freudian definition of "someone taking pleasure in submitting others to the control of his/her look", but will use it in its Greek acception: "the love of looking". Moralists and Psychoanalysts keep away.

October 27, 2011

Alice Odilon - 1982

It's rather embarassing for me to talk about Alice Odilon. Actually, in my work, I have to deal (not directly, but on a scientific level) with anorexia nervosa and not really fond of the valorisation of this psychic trouble that she's doing now for more than 30 years. From 1977 to 2004 she was her main model is self-portraits doing a proselytizing of anorexia and showing how she became leaner and leaner until she decided not to show her anymore (finally a strange decision if she considers she's reaching her physical nirvana), but goes on with a pro-ana work. Here I post one early series (from 1982) in which she clearly states that she's going to the discovery of her own self through this anorexic way. To be honest, I would like to post what she said as the legend of this series "Renaître a commencé par la mise à mort de mon corps peint en noir, efflanqué, rendu squelettique, sur un fond noir, écartant le trop de réalité, cette société qui m'assaillait par sa culture phallique" ("Reborn has begun by putting to death my body painted in black, emaciated, gone skeletal, on a black background, pushing aside this over-reality, this society that plagued me with its phallic culture"). Her site here.

3 comments:

Many thanks for your post. Just I wanted to let you know that I'm far from a "pro-ana" or "anti-ana" person. I'm a woman trying to decipher anorexia body language, anorexia rituals, anorexia codes. I'm sort of profiler. The only way to understand an "out of normality" behaviour is to be inside the fellow who is the subject of your investigation. Regards. Alice.

Yes you're probably right. It's maybe just because I'm not confortable with that. I respect your work and think we all follow our specific path since it's our life and we are free to do with it whatever we want.dk